The End of the World and After

A Dream of Last Resort

An Eladrin, a Dwarf, a Gnome, a Minotaur, A Half-elf, a Goliath, and a Wilden walk into a bar. Not a joke, but a wager, with a flabbergasted farmer named Jurgen losing a gold sovereign to the barkeep. Galena smiles a sweet I-told-you-so and waits for someone to approach.

Before too long, she has convinced the ramshackle group to do her a favor. She explains that she has been waiting for heroes, and she was convinced by night-thoughts (a polite euphemism for dreams) that some would come. Now that they are here, they need to kill the rats that infest her basement. In an improbable move, everyone agreed.

Explaining that it was “traditional,” Galena locked them in the cellar while they dealt with the varmints. All I can say is that it seemed very natural at the time.

The rats were big, and fast, and mean. In a matter of seconds, only one remained. As it darted for the exit, a wave of ennui passed over the assemblage, and they watched it scramble away. “Rat mind must live,” someone muttered. Helga, the bovisapien of the group, crushed its skull. Just as quickly, the consensus that rat mind must not necessarily prevail returned.

From upstairs, however a terrible ruckus had ensued, and smoke was beginning to pour into the cellar. After the minotaur and Ereben (the swarthy goliath barbarian) had made short work of the cellar door, the party discovered that the “city” of Klein had been the victim of a lightning fast raid by heretofore unknown assailants, monstrous little humanoids that came to be called goblins. They had torched much of the main thoroughfare, and abducted dozens of townsfolk along with a great deal of largely unprotected livestock.

The quicksilver gnomish swordmistress and the goliath quickly dealt with the goblin stragglers, while Quinn, the civic-minded half-elven ardent organised the survivors to put out the fires before they spread. Now there was no time for discussion – no one else could deal with this threat. The newly formed party left the town on the Great Northern, the road that skirted the Feywood, and weaved across miles of windswept, rocky hills before arriving at the Elfhome, Erbring. The wilden mage easily found the goblin’s trail. They had only a minutes or two’s head start.

No one could shake the image of the prophetic proprietor Galena, skewered by a goblin blade while her inn burned down around her.

Deep in the Feywood, an aging Eladrin firstborn is dreaming. He walks among hundreds of his kind in a forest community that feels somehow familiar. He sees a great ball of fire hanging in the sky above him and is not afraid. He had, in fact, rejoiced to the strange comfort of its warmth on his skin. And then black moons rose quickly into the sky. Some scatter of people – a shouting above the hoofbeats – and the rider, madness in his eyes. He wakes suddenly without screaming. Hardly at all.

From Hollowfield to Borodhan the firstborn are jolted from sleep by the intensity of their dreams. And they are not alone. On this day …

1,209 people woke believing that they had had a prophetic dream

812 people could not remember their name for hours after waking

168 people couldn’t shake the feeling that they had to do something before breakfast but they couldn’t remember what it was

143 of these went and had breakfast anyway

more than 50 people across the land woke with what they would later admit was an Unbelievably Bad Idea, but with the exception of the man who was destined to be known as the Poopthief, no one followed through.

But most importantly…

A half-dozen or so mostly unrelated individuals woke with a mysteriously strong urge to go have a beer.

It’s on ..

A blog for your campaign

While the wiki is great for organizing your campaign world, it’s not the best way to chronicle your adventures. For that purpose, you need a blog!

The Adventure Log will allow you to chronologically order the happenings of your campaign. It serves as the record of what has passed. After each gaming session, come to the Adventure Log and write up what happened. In time, it will grow into a great story!

Best of all, each Adventure Log post is also a wiki page! You can link back and forth with your wiki, characters, and so forth as you wish.

One final tip: Before you jump in and try to write up the entire history for your campaign, take a deep breath. Rather than spending days writing and getting exhausted, I would suggest writing a quick “Story So Far” with only a summary. Then, get back to gaming! Grow your Adventure Log over time, rather than all at once.